


for saints have hands

by thereinafter



Category: The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon
Genre: F/F, Momentary Time Travel, Pining, Post-Canon, Reunions, Semi-secret relationship, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28096608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereinafter/pseuds/thereinafter
Summary: The Queen of Inys goes on pilgrimage, and finds what she seeks.
Relationships: Sabran Berethnet/Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra
Comments: 20
Kudos: 44
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	for saints have hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alphayamergo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphayamergo/gifts).



Dressing a queen, even for a pilgrimage, takes at least six hands, though Sabran wishes for only two. In the mirror, she watches them tie her garters, lace her corset tight, powder her skin with scent. Over her stiff green gown they loop a golden carcanet and girdle, the colors of summer. 

All three chamberers are new and hesitant. As the girl with the comb unbraids and braids, Sabran thinks of Ead’s fingers in her hair, and does not let herself shiver. Her great task, her reformation of Virtudom, has left silver in her parting and tiny lines around her eyes, these past years. The crown pins in more securely than it feels.

Today she will take ship, for only the second time in her life. Inys and Ascalon and the Queen Tower have held her as closely as eggshells, but today she has a reason to crack them. A reason she’s made them accept for now, at least.

In the Privy Garden, Katryen embraces her. “Good journey, Sab,” she whispers, with a fierce hug. “Come back safe.” Roslain, too, waits there, with the Council; Sabran’s future hopes ride not a little on her capacity as regent. A swift southerly breeze from the orchard scatters petals over them all, leaves a lightness in her heart. It’s time, Saint—Mother—willing.

In the streets of Ascalon, banners wave and people cheer, a small victory for the queen some call golden-tongued and some heretic. At the Sanctuary of Our Lady, she kneels for the Arch Sanctarian to anoint her, publicly blessing this first visit of an Inysh queen to “the Damsel’s sacred homeland”: another victory, hard bargained for.

Dockside, breathing salt and tar and fish, stepping onto the deck of the refitted _Reconciliation_ , Sabran draws herself up tall among the Knights of the Body and waves to the gathered crowds once more. Then she turns her face to the wind from the sea, and beyond it the mountains, the desert, and the orange tree.

* * *

The currents of air and water carry the ship south and east, away from the sunset, into the blue twilight. 

Her letters take this same route out of Ascalon, flying straighter than they will sail to the Ersyr, then over land, to the Priory. And Ead’s follow that path in reverse. Though it is as risky for letters as for travelers, and she cannot know how many have been lost.

Nonetheless, enough survived to hatch and plan this journey, traversing back and forth over seasons. Sabran convinced her first, before the Virtues Council or the sanctarians, with all the steel and persuasion she could muster. Inys and its queen must be seen to make amends.

And Ead will be there, waiting; she must be.

Sabran gazes out the porthole in her royal stateroom until the light has faded. She takes out the last letter again to reassure herself, retracing the fine, firm handwriting with her fingertip. Then she extinguishes the candles save one, and reaches for her sleep remedy with rosewater, for sweet dreams. In the dark she is only flesh, as Ead once told her, and prone to fear.

Her new ladies stay obediently in the next cabin; on these warm nights, Sabran desires no bedfellow but the one she can’t have. She settles into the creamy cool linen of her pillow, in the circle of candlelight, the bed swaying as the ship rolls. The sleep-draught is a ghost of rose on her tongue.

The flame catches Sabran’s gaze like a meditation, pulls her in. She remembers dancing, the flash of Ead’s oak-honey eyes above another flame, their hands barely touching: images not worn but sharpened by the years. 

Ead has visited once before, stepping into the Great Bedchamber unannounced, in the red cloak of a Priory Damsel. She traveled secretly, on the back of her great bird, and no one knew of her presence in Ascalon without need. They spent much of the time in the Queen Tower—truthfully, in Sabran’s bed. 

This memory takes her deeper. Sabran can still feel it, stretching into Ead’s warmth behind her in the covers, Ead’s voice breaking in her ear. She brings the letter to her face and imagines she catches her scent, though paper could not hold it this long. Imagines how the rocking of the sea is carrying her ever closer to Ead’s touch.

When she does sleep, her dreams are sweet indeed.

Each day aboard, Sabran walks the deck with her ladies, or her knights. The wind and salt spray invigorate her; the waves, stretching out silver and open to the horizon, the sky the same above; the new stars in the evening as they pass into the Gulf of Edin. Once an Eastern dragon flies by, diving underwater and swooping back into the clouds, and she laughs to see its joy in flight.

The sea is a wonderfully frightening freedom. Sabran writes new letters she will not send before she reaches Ead, and commits the feelings to memory, to tell her.

* * *

In Fratàma, they are greeted by Chassar uq-Ispad, who has arranged a caravan for the royal party across the Ersyr, with a safe-conduct guarantee from Jantar the Splendid. Sabran sends her official gratitude and accepts a public blessing in the name of the Dawnsinger, as she told the Council she would. 

After the other diplomatic formalities, they set out. The desert heat is like nothing Sabran has ever known. After a suffocating, sweaty few days, she accepts Chassar’s advice and exchanges her heavy Inysh gowns for loose silks that breathe and reflect the sun. 

The caravan moves in the morning and evening, and rests when the heat is greatest, in imitation of the native creatures. They see hawks, snakes, small cats, once a pride of lions. The sands have their dangers, but none of her party wish to kill or imprison her. The world isn’t ending. 

In these clothes she can dress herself, even; breathe deeply and ride out ahead of her knights on the swift, rangy Ersyri horse she’s been given, and feel the vastness of this land, a dry sea. The white sun and the sand scour her down, shedding layers of armor until she feels raw as a newborn creature. Her skin burns and peels away and turns golden, as if she is some alchemical experiment.

Summers have brought on her times of sorrow before, but now she feels filled with heat and light, free to feel, laugh, cry. Ead has left her five times, and all she could do was wait inside her palace walls, make her heart wait inside her body. Now she is moving, acting, traveling toward her. 

Though Sabran cannot fly to her beloved on _hawiz_ or dragon, she’s always had a better seat on horseback. 

* * *

At an oasis in the Crimson Desert, red rocks interrupted by cedars and palms, four red-cloaked sisters meet them on ichneumons. Two will guide Sabran, Chassar, and a token escort to the Priory—likely protecting the knights as well, but the Council insisted. The rest of the entourage go through the mountains to Nzene, to be hosted by the Onjenyu until she rejoins them.

The Red Damsels are hard women, moving in the fluid way she associates with Ead, bowing to no one. At her first sight of them, Sabran’s hopes rose unfairly, but of course she recognizes none of the faces under the hoods. The Prioress can’t get away often, she chastises herself, as she of all people should know.

A few more days’ ride and the desert turns to grassland, then lush forest where they must wind carefully through massive trees and undergrowth. At night, the Damsels light the way with flames that twine around their fingertips. And it is night when they reach the Priory: they stop abruptly in a clearing that seems ordinary to Sabran’s eye, and one of them gestures, parting something unseen. Out of a tangle of hanging vines, the mouth of a cave materializes. The second Damsel extends her hand, lighting the path down. 

They descend into arching underground halls of ancient, rose-colored stone, lit by lamps set in the walls as well as the mage-flames. The skirts of the Inysh gown Sabran has resumed, brocade and jewels for a royal visit, brush centuries-smoothed floors. 

The place is steeped in meaning, strangeness, and power that demand silence. As the light flickers over shadowed recesses and carvings, Sabran feels as if she is walking back through time. The true home of Cleolind Onjenyu, the last tree of magic, and somewhere within, Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra, Prioress, dragonslayer, first among these women who carry fire in their bare hands.

Under the weight of it, doubt overtakes her again. With all her responsibilities, will Ead still have room in her heart? Things cannot be as they were, those sweet and bitter days in Inys. She is not Sabran’s to command. People move on, though they may not wish to. She has tried to prepare herself for this. 

But she said she would live fifty years alone for one day with Eadaz uq-Nāra, and she still means it. 

She places a hand over her bodice, stiffening her spine, remembering to bear herself like a queen.

Still, she isn’t prepared for it when the hall opens into a long room, red-clad women and men fan out to let her pass, and Ead is simply there in front of her. 

She wears a long-sleeved, embroidered, deep scarlet robe, and an authority Sabran has not seen. The silver-white waning jewel catches the lamplight, set on a chain around her neck. A sword at her hip. “Queen Sabran,” she says, in a ritual tone, but oh, still her voice.

Sabran is the foreigner here, out of place, unschooled; all the dances she’s been taught are wrong. Her raw feelings hurt in a glorious way. She can see no one else, and once more, she crosses a room to take Ead’s hand. 

“Be welcome to the Priory of the Orange Tree, in the Mother’s name.” She releases Sabran’s hand. “Will you follow me?”

Sabran nods. They go down another passage, leaving her escort behind. There is a strange vibration in the stone outside the door Ead opens, showing her into a new room. 

It surprises her with windows open to the night sky: moonlight on carved stone lattices and a balcony, the roar of the Wail of Galian thrumming through the floor. It’s the biggest waterfall she’s ever seen, rushing by them into the dark valley.

The distance between them holds until Ead turns back to her, losing her formal assurance, bright-eyed. “You’re here. _Sabran_.”

At the new note in her voice, the ache flares higher. “Will you let me touch you?” Sabran asks, bold, over the rush of water, and Ead grabs both of her hands and pulls her in.

She slides her arms around Ead’s waist, breathing her, tasting her, eyes heating with tears that she’s real. Ead frames her face and smooths the furrow between her brows. Kisses her hair and murmurs, “Still the lilacs and roses,” and kisses her mouth, “Sabran.” They fit back together, even rough-edged as they are. Sabran doesn’t know if she can stop, or how long they spend here, amid the sound of the falls.

“I should have met you in the desert.” Ead’s lips behind her ear make her shiver. “I feared it might be strange, you might not … but the waiting was hard.”

“For me, too.” Sabran wants to touch all of her she can, re-memorize her as clear and perfectly as she can, thinking but not thinking of the next parting.

“First let me—” Ead pulls away gently to light a lamp on a table, revealing silk cushions and a providential, filmy-curtained bed. “It’s the Prioress’s room. No one will come near.”

Sabran steps toward her, and on another kiss, takes Ead’s face in her hands, cataloging its minute changes. She runs fingers into her dark waves of hair, down her neck to the robe’s collar, heavy with embroidery and buttoned on the side. 

Ead laughs as she plays chamberer, unbuckling her sword and finding the other fastenings, until she is down to her shift, bare-armed. Her brown skin is summer-warm. New scars, no doubt from Draconic beasts in Yscalin, across shoulders still firm and square. The jewel gleams at her throat; the lamp gleams in her eyes. Her evening star, guiding star.

Fire leaps up in Ead’s hand as she draws Sabran to the bed. Undressing her in turn behind the veils, she sees Sabran as the night does, and loves her.

* * *

They stay closeted together the rest of the night and next day, needing years’ worth of each other in the short time before they must go back into the world. Ead has food brought in—trays of Lasian dishes new to Sabran and delicious—and a drink called sun wine that leaves them giddy and laughing in each other’s arms. 

That evening, they venture out to bathe. The bathhouse is also open to the air below the falls, cooling their skin above the hot water. Outside, the silhouette of the great tree towers against the sky.

Ead strokes through Sabran’s wet hair, leaning on the edge of the bath. “Do you still want to go to the orange tree?” 

“Of course. It’s what we planned. Why else did I come?”

She splashes water at Sabran in mock disgust, then grows serious again. “You must be prepared. There is nothing here more sacred, whether you are mage or no.”

By the time they finish the preparations Ead deems necessary, night has fallen again. 

One thousand steps down, the floor of the Vale of Blood where the Nameless One was first defeated is grassy, soft in the dark, scattered with pale orange blossom petals. Overhead, the sky is a river of stars.

Sabran’s mind is dizzy between years of sanctuary tales and the versions Ead has told her when, out of the shadows ahead, a figure moves between them and the tree.

“Who is—” Ead’s hand goes to her sword hilt. “No one else should be here.” At her neck the waning jewel is already glowing bright, as if awakened by the starlight. 

Coming closer, they see a woman in a dark cloak that might be red. Deep dark skin; long, narrow, deep-set eyes; a gleam of light on broad cheekbones. Like Kagudo Onjenyu, or—

Ead stops, staring, open-mouthed. “Mother?” she breathes. Her hand rises to grip the jewel.

Can it be? No image of the Damsel exists in Inys. But she and Ead have witnessed stranger things, and something in the woman’s presence makes Sabran believe. She holds her breath, fearing to disrupt whatever magic spins this vision.

“Greetings, sisters,” says Cleolind, in a low voice accented with the distance of a thousand years. “It is a strange night. Something in the air.” She gestures with a strong and graceful hand, stepping between the orange tree’s long roots. Behind her, Sabran thinks the pattern of roots is different, less prominent. “Do you go to the tree?”

Ead nods and follows her across the grass, in reverent silence.

In the starlight beside the Damsel, the Mother, on the field of victory that was hers, Ead looks remote, like a statue or an illumination herself. Two women who have done what Galian Berethnet never could. The sight humbles Sabran, filling her with a shuddering awe. She has the impulse to kneel as at sanctuary.

Then Ead reaches for her hand, draws her forward, and she is warm and nervous and human again, the woman whose body Sabran knows by heart, who would not entertain even the notion of being named a new Saint.

Did Siyāti uq-Nāra feel this? she wonders, stealing a glance at Cleolind. The Mother smiles, and she too is shockingly human for a moment.

Before the trunk of the tree, Cleolind spreads her hands and tilts her face up to the darkness of its canopy, murmuring a prayer Sabran cannot make out. Ead bows her head. Her fingers tighten around Sabran’s.

From above, a long rustling through the leaves, and then an orange falls into Cleolind’s palm. 

She turns, and, most unexpectedly, holds it out to Sabran. Stunned, Sabran can do nothing but accept.

“The tree does not command,” Cleolind says. “It gives us a choice, only.” She sets her hand on Ead’s shoulder and looks into her eyes. “Keep choosing well, my sister.”

And then she turns, walking into the shadow of the tree, and she is gone, and the orange is still in Sabran’s hand.

The light ebbs from the waning jewel, leaving the two of them alone, rapt at the grace they have received.

“From her own hand,” Ead says, voice unsteady. “Oh, Sabran.”

They embrace each other, arms tight, holding each other up. Sabran cradles the siden fruit like blown glass. Her blood may not sanctify her, but this feels like forgiveness, reconsecration.

“But how … ” Ead picks up the darkened jewel. “I did no magic. You didn’t—feel anything?”

Sabran shakes her head.

“A fluke of the sterren?” she murmurs. “The Priory must know. This has never—” Her eyes lift back to Sabran. “This could change things in Virtudom. Faster than you expected.”

She slips her arm from Sabran’s waist and calls fire to her hand again. “We must remember it, every detail.”

* * *

After the immediate commotion and furor subside above, near dawn, Ead takes Sabran back to her chamber to rest. 

The orange sits on a wooden dish by the bed.

“You do have the Firstblood,” Ead says softly. “I could guide you, like Tané. But it is your choice.” She leans her forehead against Sabran’s. “You have time to think.”

Sabran breathes in slowly. “Thank you.” She catches Ead’s lips in a kiss that deepens.

And that night Sabran sleeps again without a candle, Ead’s fingers laced in hers, and under these ancient stars she dreams of change.


End file.
